


A.V.E.N.G.E.R.S

by neversaydie



Category: Captain America (Movies), Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Babies, Bisexual Bucky Barnes, Bucky Barnes is a little shit, Bucky and Steve discover porn, Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov Friendship, Coming Out, Confused Sam Wilson, Crack, Drabble Collection, F/F, F/M, Fluff, Friendship, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Minor Character Death, Multi, Natasha Needs a Hug, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Panic Attacks, Phobias, Sam Wilson is a Gift, Smut, Steve Rogers and the 21st Century
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-05
Updated: 2016-01-27
Packaged: 2018-05-12 01:32:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5648863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neversaydie/pseuds/neversaydie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Avengers, as drabbles under the title of every episode of F.R.I.E.N.D.S. </p><p>Fluff/humour/a little bit of angst/a little bit of smut/a lot of inappropriate everything. </p><p>Part five: </p><p>The One With The Birth<br/>The One Where Steve Finds out<br/>The One With Nat's New Girlfriend<br/>The One With The Breast Milk<br/>The One Where Rebecca Dies</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. so no one told you life was gonna be this way

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for the idea, J. You're welcome. 
> 
> There was a great photoset with the Avengers to the Friends opening on tumblr a couple of years ago (?), anyone know where it is? Link me at saferforeveryone!

**The Pilot**

"I never said pilot!" Sam insists, gesturing wildly with his beer bottle while Steve's cheeks turn pink with laughter. He's made it his business to ruin Wilson's dating opportunities every time he's coerced into going to one of these dances where nobody dances. So far, it's working.

"I, listen. Shut up, Rogers." He glares at Steve and turns back to the girl, who's just about the same level of drunk as Sam and very, very pretty. Steve's pretty sure she's out of his league even now he has the body of a Greek god. "I am a _special operative_. The stuff I fly is one of a kind. In the _world_. The whole, entire, _world_."

"So… you're like a pilot?" She smiles, slightly baffled by the big deal he's making out of it, and Sam lets his head drop onto the table with a groan. Steve takes the opportunity to swoop in and politely remove his friend from the situation before he can start spilling state secrets about his suit to impress another girl at the bar.

He's a good wingman, but he'll never be as good as Sam.

 

**The One With The Sonogram At The End**

"You're not holding my fucking hand."

"I'm not trying to." Clint doesn't move when Natasha tries to shove past him towards the exam rooms. He knows he's playing with fire here, but he'd seen her after the implant surgery and there's no way he's going to let false notions of strength fuck his best friend up if he can help it. "I won't come in if you don't want me to. But I'm not leaving."

"I'm not asking you to stay." There's probably only one other person alive that knows Natasha Romanov, stone cold hard-ass and supposed rejecter of all emotions, still struggles with the fact that she was sterilised against her will. Clint is the only person she trusts to know outside of necessity, and he has yet to abuse that trust.

Natasha has no idea if she'll want children in the future, doesn't know or care if life will ever give her the opportunity, she just wants her goddamn body back under her control. She wants to be able to _choose_ if she reproduces, and the implant Banner and Ross have been working on and trialled on her has the potential to put that choice back in her hands. She'll know if it worked after this ultrasound exam, a month after the initial procedure.

She's terrified. Not of the exam, but of how it will feel to have her autonomy ripped away from her again if the implant didn't work. Clint knows her well enough to figure that out, and she's slightly grateful that he's here. Slightly. Not that she'd admit it out loud.

"You're not asking, but I'm staying." Clint holds his hands up, a familiar gesture of submission from their many arguments over the years. "I don't have to come in, you don't have to say a word to me, I'm just here to save you calling a cab home. You can beat the crap out of me later if you need to, I don't care. But I'm not leaving you, Nat. Even you can't make me do that."

Natasha looks at him for a long moment, steadying herself as much as staring him down, and then puts her arms around him in a short, firm hug before she turns on her heel and walks to the exam room. Alone.

She can do this alone. She can do anything alone, because Clint always has her six. Even when she can't ask.

 

**The One With The Thumb**

"What the fuck is that?"

"Thumb." Bucky shrugs, tossing the plastic-wrapped object onto the briefing table with a soft _plip_.

He's spent the first half of the meeting glowering in the shadows (his favourite position when authority figures show up, which would be more intimidating if Steve didn't know he spent half the time playing Candy Crush with his screen brightness turned low), and has clearly chosen his moment for maximum dramatic payoff. Typical drama queen Barnes.

Tony visibly recoils from the package, Natasha nods proudly, and Clint leans closer to peer at the severed digit with interest.

"First knuckle?" He glances up at Bucky to confirm with a nod, and Steve isn't all that surprised when they fistbump. "Nice."

"And you have a… thumb-" Tony backs off a little further from the table while trying to pretend he's not moving, and Steve would put money on him going for the hand sanitiser within the next five minutes "-because…?"

"We need a fingerprint to access the base. I figured instead of fucking around kidnapping the guy and frogmarching him around a combat zone, we could just skip all the bullshit and get the fingerprint in advance."

"By taking his thumb." Hill looks equally perturbed, although definitely not as squeamish as Tony. Bucky shrugs again with that poker face that's trying to say 'I'm a badass assassin don't mess with me' but really says 'I'm about to piss myself with laughter Steve don't make eye contact'. "And you couldn't have told us that _before_ we spent an hour going over plans to extradite him because…?"

"It was funny." There's only the slightest, momentary twitch of the corner of his mouth that involuntarily breaks his _too cool_ exterior, but that's enough.

Steve loses it, laughing into his hands and accidentally knocking the thumb into Tony's lap when he makes the table shake.

Typical.

 

**The One With The East German Laundry Detergent**

"Seriously? Überweiß?" Steve squints at the detergent box and uses the best of his rusty German to decipher the advertising slogans. "This looks kinda… Soviet."

"You really need to get to the Berlin Wall part of your list." Natasha snorts affectionately from her spot on the couch ( _feet_ on his table _again_ ) as Bucky plucks the detergent from Steve's hands with surprising grace. He's in a good mood today, and it shows in the way he playfully holds the box next to his face and grins like he's an ad girl on a billboard.

Steve doesn't need to think about Bucky in a sparkly dress. Not with company over, at least.

"Natalia has acquired it for make glorious whiteness of our clothings. For glory of the motherland." Bucky's showgirl pose loses some of its sheen when he does his best 'Russian' accent. Steve never should have let him see Borat. He's sure this whole escapade is going to end in a 'former'-assassin knife fight in the hall again.

"For the motherland!" Natasha joins in with the same terrible fake accent, and she and Bucky salute each other like they definitely rehearsed this before Steve got home. He tries to look put-upon, as if his heart doesn't want to burst in spite of the threat to the apartment's well-being.

He should have known he wasn't going to get his deposit back. Even if there are no knife fights, he's pretty sure this 'detergent' is going to eat right through his machine.

 

**The One With The Butt**

"D'you know bleached assholes are a thing now?"

Of all the ridiculous ways Bucky has opened a conversation in the course of their friendship, Steve's pretty sure this takes the cake. He looks up from his tablet (Sudoku, and fiendish is right) with the same expression he used to wear when Falsworth tried to show him skin mags way too close to the newsreel cameras.

Sam is trying not to choke on his coffee or spit all over their kitchen island. That's sort of the same thing as embarrassing himself in front of America.

"Why the fuck would someone… like your hair?" Steve cranes over until Bucky turns his laptop around to share the Advocate article more easily. They're wearing identically quizzical looks, and if Sam weren't finding it so hard to breathe then he'd be snapping a picture right now.

"Yeah. But the skin too, I think. It's cosmetic bleach, I guess?"

"Guys or girls?"

"Both, I think." Bucky looks totally perturbed, and he turns the screen back to squint at the accompanying pictures. "I mean, it's a nice butt. Why the fuck do I care if the asshole is a slightly lighter pink?"

"I mean—"

"Alright, I'm out." Sam throws his paper down and – politely – puts his empty glass of juice in the sink before he nopes out of the terrible twosome's great foray into the wonderful world of modern pubic politics. "Please Google this shit when I'm not around next time."

"Ten-four." Bucky flicks a dorky little salute as he scrolls down to the next picture, and Sam just catches a glimpse of twin faces of shock and horror before he gets the hell out of their apartment.

He's got better things to do with his Sunday than bleached assholes. Always.


	2. your job's a joke

**The One With The Blackout**

"I don't even understand how the Tower _can_ black out." Banner looks lost without a screen to tap, resorting to his half-charged StarkPad to try and run a schematic. It looks like movie night is pretty much cancelled, what with the city in darkness for several blocks in each direction. "I thought everything had transferred over to the new reactor."

"Only air filtering and security protocols, so far. JARVIS is gonna do everything else on his own, but he's still being uploaded. Looks like he got far enough to set up wifi, at least." Bucky, science nerd since the twenties, leans over and swipes to a different set of data than the one Bruce is squinting at to illustrate his point. Of course he knows exactly how the Tower runs, Steve thinks as he tries not to smile from his spot on the couch with Natasha's feet squished under his legs, because it's possibly inappropriate for the situation. Bucky probably bit Tony's hand off to listen to him ramble about his great inventions.

Not that Tony is doing a lot of rambling right now.

"Uh, guys?" Clint and Tony had been giving each other shit while acquiring snacks from the open-plan kitchen, but things have gone very quiet since the light disappeared. 

Tony is standing rigidly with his back to the sink, chest and shoulders jerking in aborted motions that look like he can't take a full breath. They all seem to realise what's happening at once, but Bucky is handing the tablet back to Banner and crossing the room swiftly before anyone else can figure out how to react. Tony shies away from him for a second as he approaches, but Bucky doesn't keep his distance.

After all the shit he's been through since he came in from the cold, Steve supposes it's only logical that he'd be the leading authority on dealing with a panic attack.

"Pal. Look at me." Bucky takes hold of Tony's shoulders firmly, bringing himself down to eye level and making sure they maintain eye contact. Tony looks lost, vulnerable like Steve's never seen him, and not for the first time he wonders just how dark the other side of a black hole is. "Pepper's fine, JARVIS is still on the mainframe. The dark's temporary, we're gonna get the backup generator online in a few. Fifteen minutes, I swear."

"Fifteen…" Tony trails off, sounding strangled, but he shakily nods and Bucky lets go of his shoulders. Clint is already hunting in the kitchen drawers for candles, moving a little closer to Tony once Bucky lets him go. Sometimes this team are pretty great for things besides kicking ass and pulling pranks.

"Steve, tell these guys about the blackout in '38 when you brought that fuckin' stray dog home. See if they wouldn't have kicked your ass." Bucky shoots over his shoulder as he drags Bruce out to the hallway. He figures Steve being a dork will distract Tony enough to keep him from freaking out while they work out how to get some lights back on.

He and Stark aren't the best of friends, circumstances have cut off that possibility for them, but there's no way Bucky's going to leave one of his team panicking if there's something he can do about it.

Cryo was darker than death. He's not going to let anyone else get left in the dark.  

 

**The One Where Nana Dies Twice**

Steve shows up with a sympathy card and beer. He wasn't sure if flowers were still the thing these days, especially not for guys.

Sam looks surprisingly normal when he opens his door. No puffiness around his eyes, no heavy-limbed resignation or begrudging slowness to his movements. It's a surprise because he was close to his grandmother, told enough stories about her that Steve feels like he knew her, and people aren't so hardened against death in the future. Relatives and neighbours don't routinely drop dead from preventable illness, not everyone has watched their mom lose babies or their classmates just disappear from school one day and never come back.

Although Sam did see his best friend die, Steve figures, so maybe he's just part of that unfortunate group of people who still know what death tastes like.

"I didn't text you." He sounds tired, waving Steve inside with a sigh. "It was a false alarm, Nana's still kicking. I've got a flight at six, should be able to get there in time."

"Y'know, Tony would get you there sooner if you asked." Steve sets down the beer and discreetly pockets the card. Sam shakes his head and grabs a bottle with eagerness that's completely unsurprising given how shitty the last few days have been.

"Sometimes you've gotta do stuff on your own." He twists off the cap and takes a drink, and Steve remembers just how _pissed_ he used to get when Bucky tried to do everything for him like he was even weaker than he was.

 _"I can fuckin' do it myself!"_ was probably the start of most of their arguments, back then.

"I hear that." Steve grabs a bottle of his own, because he's no kind of man if he lets his friend stress-drink alone, and raises it slightly in a half-toast.

It's halfway to his lips when the phone rings.  

 

**The One Where Underdog Gets Away**

"I only let him go for a second, I swear!"

"It's a busy area with a lot of dogs, it only takes a second." For the first time Steve's known her, Natasha looks harassed. She twists to look around the park again, as if Lucky will magically appear from nowhere through sheer force of will. "Clint's going to kill you."

"He can't have gotten that far, we'll find him." Steve's ears are pink and he's starting to get worried now. If Natasha is concerned then he's _definitely_ fucked up, which he tries not to think too hard about as they set off towards the entrance of the park at a jog.

"You're banned from dog-sitting _forever_. Clint loves that thing like a _child_ , Steve." Natasha looks genuinely frazzled for a moment, before they skid to a halt at the park gates and she lets out a relieved breath before regaining her composure.

There are a few food trucks outside the park entrance and, Steve thanks all kinds of gods, one of them is selling pizza by the slice. Lucky is happily digging into the remains of a slice he's clearly pulled out of the nearby trash, totally content like he hasn't just given them both a heart attack.

"See? I told—"

"Still banned from dog-sitting." Natasha mutters, stalking over to the dog and chastising it in something that's definitely not English. Lucky just licks her hand happily, completely unperturbed by her anger.

Sometimes Steve really wishes he was a dog.

 

**The One With The Monkey**

"Why do you have a—"

"It was a bet."

"It was totally not a—"

"Shh, Brucie. Just go with it." Tony pats him on the head on his way past, choosing not to see the shade of green that tints Bruce's cheeks. "What's the point of billions if you can't go a little Michael now and then?"

"Who's Michael?" Steve squints at the monkey curiously, not reaching out to let it grab his fingers the way Bucky had as soon as the stupid thing had been plopped down in the middle of the coffee table.

"Please don't call it Bubbles." Clint calls over his shoulder, busy trying to shut Lucky in the hall before Monkey vs Dog becomes the new youtube sensation suspiciously uploaded from the Tower's security feed. JARVIS has way too much autonomy these days.

"I do not see the purpose of this creature. It's far too small for combat." Thor pokes the monkey appraisingly, pulling his finger back with a yelp when he gets bitten for his trouble. "I stand corrected."

"Pepper has no idea you have this thing, does she?" Natasha hasn't made any attempt to get nearer or further away from the monkey, and she looks way too amused by all their reactions.

"She does not. And that's how it's gonna stay because I need to keep this thing in my possession for…" He pulls out his phone and checks the countdown displayed prominently on the lock screen. "Seventy-one hours."

"Well." Bruce picks up his tea before it gets knocked over by furry little hands and takes a sip, exchanging a knowing look with Natasha over the mug. "This is going to be… interesting."

"Can we put clothes on it?" Bucky has the monkey on his shoulder now, watching it thoughtfully as it tries to pry apart the plates of his arm. "I'm thinking—"

"Instagram?" Tony snaps his fingers with a grin. "Way ahead of you, he came with a wardrobe."

Steve rests his head back on the couch and lets the madness wash over him, because there's no way to resist this crazy once you're in it.

As long as he doesn't have to clean up monkey poop, he finds he really doesn't mind.

 

**The One With Mrs Wilson**

"So you're the one who has my baby getting shot at all over the news."

Steve really should have checked to see if Sam had company before he came over.

"Mom, please." Sam looks like an embarrassed teenager, squirming between them in his living room like he's really wishing Steve had checked before coming over too. Bucky is lurking behind Steve, a little spooky because he wasn't expecting there to be somebody new in the house, but he doesn't bolt even when Mrs Wilson reaches out and slaps Steve on the back of the head.

" _Mom_." Sam's expression goes from embarrassed to mortified, although Steve just sheepishly rubs his head like he's pretty sure he deserved that. To everyone's surprise, Bucky breaks the silence by laughing.

"I've been wanting to do that to him for being a reckless son of a bitch for decades." He sticks his hand out in a sudden burst of confidence (the flesh one, thankfully, because Sam's not sure how much he wants to get into explaining _that_ today), and Mrs Wilson takes it with a conspiratorial smile twitching across her lips. "Lemme tell you about the time in Bolivia…"

Sam and Steve exchange a wary glance, both preparing to duck. This isn't an alliance that can end well for either of them.


	3. you're broke

**The One With The Dozen Lasagnes**

"How many?"

"A dozen." Sam sounds resigned and Steve does his best not to laugh over the line.

"So your Mom gave you…"

"A dozen fucking lasagnes." There's the crackle of a sigh and Steve has to bite his knuckle not to crack up. "I don't have space for this shit in my freezer, man. Come pick them up."

"Why does she want us to have a dozen lasagnes?" It's a nice gesture, sure, but unless he's _vastly_ misunderstood something about modern etiquette he's pretty sure it's not normal to give your son more than one baked dish for his friends who you've just met.

"She thought Bucky looked skinny." Sam sounds so _done_ with the whole thing, and Steve can't help laughing out loud this time. "He probably gave her his _starving child during the Depression_ shit, she's a sucker."

"I mean, we did go hungry most days." He puts his best Serious Voice on and hears Bucky snort from across the living room. "I think I had my first full meal when I was—"

"Yeah, and you walked twenty miles to school every day through the snow." Steve can _hear_ Sam rolling his eyes.

"Barefoot. There was broken glass sometimes." He nods solemnly, even though Sam can't see him, and Bucky glances at him over the back of the couch with a fondly-amused look on his face. Steve's been a little shit since he was born, it's just a few select people who get to see that these days.

"Come get your shit or I'm giving it to the neighbours." Sam grumbles before he hangs up with a decisive _beep_.

Bucky and his Mom being friends is the _worst_.

 

**The One With The Boobies**

"They know it means idiot, right?"

Bucky is thoroughly unimpressed with some of the slang that's developed since the last time he got to have a conversation, which Steve can't help but find kind of hilarious.

"Not anymore." He shrugs, scrolling through the slang dictionary he's downloaded onto his phone to find the right entry before passing it over. "It means tits exclusively. I think."

"S'horseshit." Bucky grumbles, swiping through the definition without really bothering to read it. "And what the fuck is 'on fleek'? The only thing my legs are on is the couch, I don't get it."

"Who said it?" Steve knows exactly what 'on fleek' means (he thinks), but Bucky's grumpy cat face is too cute to change so soon.

"Nat." He scowls at the phone and tosses it back to Steve, who's just lucky the serum improved his reflexes enough that he doesn't get a touchscreen to the face. "She never explains anything. Thinks it's funny."

"It's a brave new world, doll." Steve smirks and ducks the remote when Bucky tries to hit him on purpose this time. "We're just living in it."

 

**The One With The Candy Hearts**

"…so Sam said there's this place near Grand Central that prints whatever you want on them, and I was thinking since it's the fashion to give your friends something as well as your sweetheart we could…"

Steve trails off from his rambling when he turns around and registers the look on Bucky's face. He's in exactly the same position at the table that he was when Steve came into the kitchen, and now he's staring rigidly at the bag of candy. His mug of coffee is frozen halfway to his mouth, and Steve's not sure he's even blinking.

The grey pallor draining through his face says something overwhelming is going on in his head, and the last time Bucky got that look he didn't speak for three days.

Shit.

"Buck?" Steve's not expecting to get a response, he just wants to make sure Bucky hears his voice before he moves and potentially startles him. Broken noses might heal fast for him, but they're still something to actively avoid. "I'll put it away, hold on."

He hurries to his bedroom and throws the bag of candy under the bed where Bucky won't see it by accident. It'll stay there with the magazines and the knife block and the cheese grater, real monsters in the space where only nightmares should live. They've yet to be able to bring anything back out from under the bed, but Steve has hope. Sometimes.

The smell of bile is hanging heavy in the air when he gets back to the kitchen. Bucky is leaning over to spit in the sink, shoulders hunched up like he wants to disappear. It breaks Steve's fucking heart.

"I can't eat those." Bucky doesn't have to turn around to know someone's in the room with him, and there's a guilty part of Steve that's relieved he can't see his face. He doesn't want to break another punching bag this week.

"Did—"

"You don't wanna know." Bucky lurches slightly like he's going to heave again before aborting the movement, getting himself back under control with a heavy swallow. "Trust me."

"Can I do anything?" Steve asks quietly, after a few moments of silence. He always feels totally useless in these moments, and it's a struggle to stay calm enough to not make things worse sometimes.

It looks like Bucky's frozen again for a minute, before he unsteadily turns on the tap. He walks over and wraps his arms around Steve's waist, clinging to him like a monkey as he breathes unsteadily against his neck. There's nothing Steve can do but hold him until the shaking stops.

Not just one more punching bag getting broken this week, then. Several.

 

**The One With The Stoned Guy**

Clint, it turns out, is _fantastic_ on painkillers.

"How are you not a fuckin' dog already?" He squints at Steve from his hospital bed, like he's personally offended that there are no dogs in the immediate area. "You're _blond_."

"Glad you're still here too, buddy." Steve pats his shoulder awkwardly, just relieved that Bucky's not here to turn _why aren't you a dog already_ into a Tower-wide meme.

"Alright, I think that's enough for today. We've established that the squishy human is still squishing." Tony, tactful as ever, isn't the most thrilled about being here. He usually takes it hard when someone gets injured on a mission, particularly if that someone doesn't have crazy healing powers. "Starbucks, c'mon. I'll teach you what a latte is, Cap."

"I know what a fuckin—"

"Can you both _shhhhh_ , please. My head is sleeping." Clint can hardly hear without his aids, so it's probably just the fact people are still in the room with his soggy brain that's bothering him. Either that or the whole falling off a building thing did some cognitive recalibration that even Natasha couldn't manage.

Steve pats his shoulder again before he follows Tony out of the door, already starting to plot his revenge for the latte comment. They bump shoulders on the way down the hall, both handling that guilt-relief rollercoaster of an injured comrade. Of course, Tony can't let companionable silence sit for long.

"I texted your boyfriend the dog thing."

Steve's going to need some revenge for that, too.

 

**The One With Two Parts**

"So it's supposed to just…"

"Wait, there's another part. I think it's supposed to go…"

"But where do the batteries go then?"

"Maybe it's chargeable. There's gotta be a manual…"

Steve walks into his living room, takes one look at Natasha and Bucky trying to assemble something he's pretty sure is a hot-pink dildo on the coffee table, and walks right back out.

He didn't read the definition of 'can't even' in his slang app, but Steve's pretty sure he's just found it.  


	4. your love life's D.O.A.

**The One With All The Poker**

"She's cheating!" Clint whines as he points at Natasha, sitting there with her most innocent expression firmly in place. "Steve! Make her stop!"

"Dunno why you people think he's some kinda moral authority." Bucky drawls, amused and the only team member still fully clothed after he'd firmly opted out of the 'strip' aspect of strip poker. Not that he's been losing enough that he'd be down more than one of his numerous sweaters anyway. "He used to cheat like hell and clean us outta cigarettes at least once a week."

"There were no Nazis around, I was bored." Steve shrugs, innocent face much less convincing than Natasha's. He's also still mostly clothed, which makes a lot more sense now.

"Maybe you and Ruski Business should play one on one." Tony is the least dressed of them all, occasionally flexing his muscles and trying not to look like he's doing it since he lost his shirt. "Preferably _before_ I lose my boxers."

"Nobody wants to see that, Tony. Trust me." Natasha (who has actually put on clothes since the start of the game as some sort of trophy) quirks an eyebrow and throws her cards down with a flourish. "Rogers, on the other hand…"

"Dammit." Steve curses and tosses his cards on the table before reaching down to pull a sock off. He maintains his innocent expression in the face of loud protests from the rest of the team while Bucky just smirks. "Socks count as two items of clothing, look it up."

"See, this is what I mean." Bucky leans back in his chair and regards them all smugly in their unclothed glory. "Professional cheater."

Steve doesn't try and defend himself. It's not his fault if people assume Captain America is honest.

 

**The One Where The Monkey Gets Away**

"Why the hell did you take him to the park in the first place?!"

"Instagram! He had a ladybug costume! It was adorable!"

Thor hears Tony and Bucky screaming at each other down the hall and wisely chooses to step back into the elevator and close the doors before they can come around the corner. God or no, he's not going to get caught in a confined space with them during one of their internet-based disagreements if he can avoid it.

It was bad enough when Jane introduced them to the video of a sneezing baby panda. The internet remains mysterious and Thor definitely doesn't need Stark and Barnes to try and explain it to him. Vine was enough for a mortal lifetime.

 

**The One With The Evil Orthodontist**

"You never had braces?"

"It was never a priority." Bruce shifts uneasily in his chair, glancing over his shoulder to the orthodontist's door for the hundredth time this minute. "I've got a couple of false teeth after some got knocked out. That's about the last time I wanted to go near a dentist."

Bucky and Bruce have formed an unexpected bond since Bucky arrived at the Tower. Something to do with having to repress something deadly inside you all the time makes friends in foxholes, and they can often be found on one another's floors spending time quietly sharing the same space. Their knitting club is something special too. This month they're making a quilt.

"I thought everyone got braces in the future." Bucky admits, leaning back and letting his head rest against the off-beige waiting room wall. "Steve keeps trying to get me to see a dentist."

"Do you need to?" Bruce is just happy to have something to distract him from the looming prospect of someone sticking starchy gloved fingers into his mouth. "I would've thought the whole super-soldier thing would've made that unnecessary."

"I dunno. I'm not doing it anyway." Bucky folds his arms and glances at the door himself, knee jiggling anxiously with pent-up energy. "I don't like the chair."

They sit in uncomfortable silence for a few more minutes, both trying not to be enraged by the receptionist's pen-clicking, before Bucky stands up and grabs Bruce's shoulder bag, slinging it over his metal arm. The green tint under Bruce's fingernails has been darkening the longer they've been sitting in the bland waiting room, and the whole reason Bucky's here is to stop a trip to the orthodontist turning into something that brings in the National Guard.

"C'mon. You don't need this shit. We'll get Pad Thai." Bruce is only too happy to follow Bucky out of the office, ignoring the fact the orthodontist's door opens right as they leave. "Straight teeth are overrated, anyway."

"You think everything straight is overrated." He snorts. Bucky just smirks and jostles him slightly with his shoulder as they walk into the air outside the office and leave probing fingers and threatening chairs far, far behind.

 

**The One With The Fake Hawkeye**

"So you're not even the real Hawkeye."

"I am the… For fucks sake Katie." Clint grumbles and glares at his ('not a') sidekick who grins back at him smugly. She's enjoying this way too much and it's exactly why he was trying to avoid her showing up at the Tower. "This is exactly why—"

"So if she's the real Hawkeye then you're an imposter." Tony is having way too much fun with this, and Clint is about to set off an exploding arrow just to get his work-friends and his friend-girl to stop interacting. "Is that why you did the whole ninja-secret-nunchucks-thing—"

"Okay, time to go." Clint lets Lucky off the leash so he bolts for the door and Kate chases after him instinctively. She's a great friend, a great hero, but she's also about nine years old and likely to tell the rest of his team any embarrassing story she can think of to impress them and embarrass the hell out of Clint.

He embarrasses himself in front of them enough already, he really doesn't need Kate to tell them about the time he shot his own satellite dish off the roof of his building after a beer too many. Or the time he got pantsed by Russian mobsters. Or the time…

He follows Kate and Lucky out, not making eye contact with Natasha who's about as close to bursting out laughing as she ever gets. Next time he's going to specify where they meet for coffee, because the last thing he needs in the _world_ is for Kate and the team to start ganging up on him.

Clint's managed to keep the most embarrassing aspects of his car-crash life off the books, so far. That's how he wants it to stay.

 

**The One With The Ick Factor**

"What's that?" Sam cocks his head to the side and reaches out to point at the white sheen on Bucky's metal wrist. "Polish or something?"

"Yeah." Bucky shrugs nonchalantly, turning his attention back to Mario Kart with the smallest of smirks tugging at the corner of his mouth. "Or something."

Steve shows up twenty minutes later with Indian food, and the three of them spend a perfectly pleasant evening yelling obscenities at various video games and eating way more food than three grown men should rightly be able to put away. It's nearly ten o'clock when Steve glances over at Bucky and his face flushes with the Irish bar tan Bucky's been giving him shit for since they were kids.

"Didn't you even wash your hands?" He hisses, embarrassed and clearly hoping that Sam can't hear him from the armchair. "Have you seriously been sitting here all night with _that_ on you?"

"I was wondering how long it'd take you to notice. You're the one who didn't stick around to cuddle." Bucky's got that shit-eating grin on his face, and Sam looks from him to Steve and down to the dried white smear on Bucky's arm with growing horror.

"Aw! Guys!" He drops the controller (that Bucky had passed him with _jizzy fingers_ along with his plate and cutlery and… _no_ ) and wipes his hands on his shirt with disgust. "You two are walking biohazards."

"At least I washed it outta my hair this time." Bucky shrugs, ostensibly keeping his attention on the TV as he clearly does his best not to laugh. Steve looks sheepish, but then he's not apologising either for getting his bodily fluids on his water-averse boyfriend and then leaving him in Sam's unsuspecting company.

Sam needs better friends. Seriously.


	5. it's like you're always stuck in second gear

**The One With The Birth**

"That thing is way too small to be Thor's kid. Probably didn't even stretch anything out."

Bucky is, as always, sensitive and appropriate with all his comments in delicate situations. Like when handed a new-born half-Asgardian child, for example.

"What does it even do? It just lies there. Useless." He gently pokes the baby's stomach, which receives no response as she keeps lying there sleeping peacefully in the crook of his elbow. He clearly remembers how to hold a baby, even if he doesn't know why since memories of his sisters seem to have deserted him completely. "S'cute though. Steve, you wanna hold her?"

"Uh, it's okay." Steve has been craning over Bucky's shoulder and practically breathing down his neck, but quickly backs off when he turns to him to offer the baby over. Bucky's got that look in his eye like he's going to chase him around the room with it unless he gives in, though. "Really, I don't wanna hurt her."

"There's only room for one baby in this room, Rogers, and it ain't you." Bucky practically shoves the baby into his arms and Steve stands there holding her gingerly like he might crush her by breathing. "See? Just support her head and you'll be fine."

"I'm not getting near that thing." Clint squints at the baby suspiciously from the couch, one hand holding Lucky's collar in case he decides to try and investigate the baby while Steve isn't expecting it. "They wait until I hold them and they poop. They do it on purpose."

"Women generally try and repel you, maybe they just start early." Natasha doesn't look any more eager to hold the baby, although she's already looked it over and muttered something appraising in Russian before getting back to her book.

"How long did Thor say he'd be?" Steve pipes up nervously, voice cracking as the baby shifts in his arms and almost gives him a heart attack.

"Couple of hours. You're first on diaper duty." Bucky is snapping pictures of Captain America holding a baby like a bomb and gleefully posting them to Instagram, which isn't helping anything except his follower count. "Smile, sweetheart!"

"I hate you so much." Steve still pulls what looks more like a grimace at Bucky's instruction though, because he can never exactly say no to him.

That's the picture that ends up trending, of course. Steve knew babies were bad news.

 

**The One Where Steve Finds Out**

Bucky sees the files on the coffee table, manila and innocuous but for the scrawled Russian cursive on their title lines. It takes him a second to figure out why the handwriting is familiar, then he bolts.

"Bucky!" Steve is up and off the couch in a split second, following Bucky when he crashes into his bedroom and tries to shut the door in his face. "Buck, wait."

"You didn't need to know." There's no way to hide that he's almost in tears, but Bucky clenches his jaw and tries anyway as he starts shoving clothes and essentials in the first bag he finds. His first instinct is to run, as fast and as far as he can no matter how illogical the impulse is. "I didn't want you to know!"

He knows exactly what's in the HYDRA files, had thought he'd managed to burn them all before they came close to tainting Steve with the true depths of his dirt. The photographs are bad enough, but it's the clinical recitations of his suffering that crawl through Bucky's dreams and wake him up sweating and retching and trying not to be too loud –

_Subject was initially penetrated at approximately twelve minutes into the procedure. Nine personnel were involved in the practical portion of the experiment and averaged a duration of ten minutes once subject began vocalising at–_

"I'm sorry, Buck. I didn't know what was in there." Steve doesn't hesitate like he usually does when Bucky's checking out. This time he walks straight across the room and puts his arms around him like he doesn't give a shit if he gets his jaw broken. "I'm _sorry_."

"Yeah." Bucky chokes out wetly against his shoulder, pressing his forehead against Steve's solid mass and trying not to show how hard he's shaking. He never wanted this to touch Steve, never wanted the shame that threatens to drown him to come near the person he loves more than life itself. And now that's out of his hands. Forever. "Me too."

 

**The One With Nat's New Girlfriend**

"You and Hill."

"Me and Hill." She nods, sipping her espresso delicately and looking unbearably elegant under her oversized sun hat. Clint's pretty sure it's illegal to look good in a hat twice as big as your face. "Is that a problem?"

"Nah. Nothing you do surprises me anymore." Clint shrugs and chugs several gulps of his giant, sugary black coffee, much to Natasha's disgust. "It does make you like, nine times scarier though. Terrifying lady-powers combined and shit."

"Only nine? We'll have to work on it." She's been a little nervous about telling someone, not that anyone but Clint would be able to notice, and he kicks her boot under the table with a grin to make her scowl in the way that means she's not really mad.

"The team isn't gonna care." He tosses a sugar packet at her head when she looks like she's going to object. "Seriously."

"So why don't they know about you and Matt? If they won't care." Natasha narrows her eyes accusingly and Clint turns things over in his head for a few seconds before he smiles, leaping before he looks as usual.

"I'll tell them if you do." He grins at the tiny twitch of surprise on Natasha's face, because getting a reaction from her is always satisfying. Plus, the closet's getting a bit cramped for him anyway. "We've got enough secrets anyway."

 

**The One With The Breast Milk**

"Alien breast milk."

Bruce is not amused.

"Kree, to be precise."

Tony, on the other hand, is very amused.

"It's _blue_."

"They're blue."

"What are you planning to do with it?"

"Smoothies."

"Please tell me you're not serious."

"Not very. Thirty-five percent. Thirty-nine max."

"Who in their right mind is going to drink a blue breast milk smoothie?"

"Barton'll do anything for fifty bucks."

"Natasha will murder you."

"She suggested it!"

 

**The One Where Rebecca Dies**

Bucky's pretty sure Steve is more upset than he is when the last of the Barnes sisters passes away, going peacefully in her sleep at the assisted living facility she's called home for the last ten years.

His youngest sister doesn't exist in his memories anymore, he only knows her as a nice old woman who cried for about two hours straight the first time he was persuaded to see her, still half-feral and nonverbal after coming in from the cold. He'd let her hold his hand, some primal instinct recognising family even through a fried brain, but Bucky's still never managed to recall more than the faintest memory of her as a child. He remembers how to braid pigtails and hold babies and how to fix runs in stockings but never knows why.

It's sort of painful to try and touch the missing memories, like pressing on a bruise.

So he goes to the funeral, of course, and holds Steve's hand while he does his best Captain America face and tries not to cry where someone might see him, but Bucky remains unable to force out a tear. He feels like he should, feels like it's the proper thing to do, and the fact that he can't makes him itch for reasons he can't explain. It's like it's not fair to Bucky Barnes, the one who died in the Alps, that he can't mourn for his sister because someone scraped him out and tore him up and shoved him back into himself again when there wasn't much left in the way of a human being.

There are some family photos on display at the wake, and Bucky determinedly avoids them until Steve has to go to the bathroom and he doesn't have an excuse to stay on the other side of the room anymore. He gives in and wanders over to the table, immediately focusing on the picture of Bucky Barnes and his two little sisters sitting on the floor in front of a Christmas tree. He looks teenage in the picture, rangy and just starting to broaden, and he's clearly in the middle of helping one of the girls build what looks like a doll's baby carriage on the floor in front of them.

They look happy. Bucky wonders how those little girls acted when they heard their brother had been killed in action. They'd been able to mourn, Bucky Barnes never got that chance. He meets his own eyes in the picture and sighs quietly, picking up a drink from the table and raising it slightly in a solitary toast.

"Sorry." He mutters, looking back at himself and regretting. There's nothing he can do for the kid now, couldn't even cry. "I tried."

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Let me know what you thought, there are five more to come soon!


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